President Barack Obama plays golf Monday at the Farm Neck Golf Club in Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard, Mass.
Only a few days into his weeklong getaway on Martha's Vineyard, President Obama has shown he can stretch his vacation muscle. He was photographed this morning playing a round of golf with a plan to squeeze in some tennis in the afternoon. In response to a question about what the first family has planned for the rest of the week, a White House spokesman says that even Obama himself doesn't have a ─schedule─the true shaking of the organizational leash that comes with the presidency. We're also told he won't be making any public appearances.
All presidents take some time off this time of year, but in decidedly different ways. Some have used August to have surgery, while others try to reconnect with their families and home towns. We bring you the more colorful, contrived or just plain peculiar presidential vacations on which Secret Service has had to tag along.
A president might be able to keep a low profile on vacation, but it's an uphill battle to completely avoid the omnipresent eyes of the press. Grover Cleveland needed some privacy and had an idea. Suffering from mouth cancer, Cleveland assembled a team of doctors and had surgery aboard a friend's yacht en route to Buzzard's Bay, Mass. Despite Cleveland being temporarily incapacitated and hyped up on anesthetic laughing gas, no political power was ever transferred. The secret remained with Cleveland and close aides for more than 25 years, revealed only after he died.
President George W. Bush knew how to get away, famously taking a full month off each year plus other scattered vacations (staffers called Bush's trips to his ranch in Crawford, Texas, "working vacations"). Bush had the most benign of interests─chopping wood and clearing brush─but when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Bush was on vacation, still chopping wood and still clearing brush, which critics pointed to when accusing the president of a sluggish and indolent return to Washington to coordinate federal aid.
While Bill Clinton loved putting his feet up at Martha's Vineyard, White House aides thought that the New England coast made the president look overly extravagant and out of touch with much of working America. So in 1995 and 1996, Clinton went along with a finely crafted vacation to Jackson Hole, Wyo., where pollsters thought he could foster a more rugged image, hiking some trails and chopping some wood. The plan didn't work so well as Clinton spent much of his time playing golf.
Annual sojourns are meant to for getting away and unwinding, but Dwight Eisenhower, apparently, just couldn't relax. In 1953, while on vacation in Augusta, Ga., Eisenhower suffered a heart attack. Exactly two years later, this time on vacation in Colorado, he suffered another.
After spending several days fishing on a remote island off the Georgia coast, Jimmy Carter ended his vacation with a full family reunion at the Georgia home of his son, Jack. News of the president in town didn't stay a secret long. After visiting with family, Carter walked to the town square to shake awaiting hands.
And we tip our hats to The Christian Science Monitor for this one. Lyndon Johnson had a 400-acre ranch in Texas around which he loved to drive a white Lincoln Continental. On one trip, with reporters along for the ride, Johnson pulled up to a sow with several piglets and offered to pose for photos with the pig if any of the journalists could grab one of the babies. More difficult than it sounded, the sow angrily charged one of the reporters, leaving Johnson squealing "Whooeee!" with laughter.
How do other world leaders spend their vacations? Take a look at our list of favorites here.
